Sunset at Sheba (4 page)

Hazell turned, his eyes a little scared. ‘It’s Fabricius,’ he said. ‘He’s in the hotel. He’s asking to see you, Mr Plummer.’

Plummer glanced quickly at the others.

‘Better see him,’ Hoole advised. ‘He’s only fishing. He doesn’t know anything. Give us a minute, though. Just give us a minute.’

Plummer nodded and Hazell muttered something to the clerk and closed the door softly.

‘Blasted treacherous bung-nosed Boer,’ Kitto said. ‘He’s one of De Wet’s men. What’s
he
want?’

‘Information, I suppose,’ Hoole pointed out. ‘About Schuter. But we can stand him off all right. We’ve nothing to worry about. Not yet. Not with Willie out of the way. We’ve only to decide what to do about this Schuter chap. That’s all.’

Plummer was studying the floor and he looked up quickly. ‘Can’t we make certain he
doesn’t
change his mind?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Romanis looked startled. ‘Kill him?’

Plummer swung round. ‘For God’s sake, Romanis!’ he said. ‘Will you never learn? You’ve been reading too much Henty and Marryat. This is the Twentieth Century. There musn’t be any violence.’

Romanis looked sulky. ‘What’s a Sheeny or two?’ he said.

Hoole took off his glasses and started to polish them. ‘You said he shot for a living?’ he asked, peering shortsightedly at Winter.

Winter nodded. ‘For the Kimberley and Jo’burg markets. You can get a pound a carcass even here in Plummerton. That’s why he was so perfect as Willie’s middleman. Few friends. No questions asked. He’s not the type to ask questions. Keeps himself to himself. More used to the veld than the town. Quiet chap with a habit of sitting still and looking harmless. But don’t be taken in by
that,’
he ended. ‘It’s an old hunter’s trick.’

Romanis leaned across the billiard table to where Plummer was sullenly poking at the balls again.

‘I’m damned if I’d have too many scruples in dealing with a bloody Sheeny,’ he said. ‘Especially one with a criminal record.’

‘When you’ve a few more years on your back, Romanis,’ Plummer said with insulting calmness, ‘I’ll start listening to you. Barnato was a Jew. So were plenty of others. For the time being there’ll be no violence.’

Kitto snorted. ‘Rhodes would have said "Clap him in irons and say he was drunk",’ he muttered over his shoulder.

‘This is the Twentieth Century,’ Plummer persisted.

‘And there’s a war on. And a lot at stake.’

‘Perhaps a
slight
show of force,’ Winter suggested quietly. ‘To encourage him on his way. What’s wrong with Kitto seeing him clear of the town, seeing he goes where he promised to go? Why not a few men between him and Plummerton so he can’t come back even if he
does
change his mind?’

Plummer turned. ‘Kitto’s no longer employed by me,’ he pointed out. ‘He doesn’t lead company police these days. He leads Government troops. He’s a soldier and he volunteered. He’s in charge of a military area now with orders to look out for De Wet. I wouldn’t ask him to get himself mixed up in any of your crazy wild west schemes.’

Romanis looked up. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘what about the woman?’

Winter laughed. ‘Where did you learn your gallantry, Romanis? The Trocadero? The Criterion bar? Polly would probably welcome the company. She’s a warm-hearted soul and likes a man about the house.’

‘Suppose he got awkward?’

‘With Kitto and his armed might just behind?’

‘This is a company matter,’ Plummer persisted. ‘And Kitto’s interests in my affairs are subordinated to the nation’s now - with my complete approval.’

Winter looked up at Plummer from the corner of his eye, then glanced at Kitto who had taken no part in the discussion.

‘Don’t rush it, Offy,’ he said. ‘I think I see a Homeric craving for martial valour brewing up.’

Kitto was flicking at his boots with his crop, the everlasting soldier, enduring and honest to the point of embarrassment. He was watching them with a faint hard scorn in his eyes and as Winter spoke, he clasped his hands behind his back and stalked down the room before turning to face them. ‘None of you’ve noticed that the country’s interests are marching side by side with Offy’s for the moment,’ he said brusquely, with a suggestion of contempt for the narrowness of their vision.

‘What do you mean?’ Plummer laid down the cue and looked up.

Kitto’s face was twisted disdainfully. ‘What could bring down Offy could bring down the Government,’ he pointed out. ‘If Fabricius picks this boy up, all this about Willie’ll be worth a thousand men to De Wet - a thousand of those damn’ Dutch - Huguenot farmers who were born with a rifle in their hands and a horse between their legs. Any hint of British sympathy with them could mean the end of Botha,
and
the Union - the end of South Africa, the end of England. I only came here today for old time’s sake, but looked at that way this affair comes within my sphere. What’s to stop me taking an armed patrol into Dhanziland, ostensibly to search for De Wet, and sitting on this merchant’s tail? I’d not be transgressing from my orders, and at the same time I might do a lot of good.’

‘That’s the answer, Offy,’ Romanis said enthusiastically, the everlasting schoolboy with a head full of easy solutions. ‘That’s just the thing you want.’

‘I’m not doing it for Offy,’ Kitto snapped immediately, incensed by the suggestion that he was caught up in their intrigue. ‘I’m doing it because it’s obviously my duty.’

Plummer was thinking deeply, studying the cigar he was smoking, his pale blue eyes expressionless.

‘It’d have to be a large patrol,’ Kitto went on slowly. ‘I couldn’t risk being caught out there by De Wet with just a few men - but if I took the cars I’d be good and mobile and I could get back easily if I’m needed. I can pick up a detachment from the Sidings and wait for him there. But he’ll shift all right when he sees us coming. He might even lead us to De Wet.
That’d
be a feather in my cap after all these years.’

‘You might even save Britain the year of grace and the series of defeats she seems to need to set about fighting a war,’ Winter grinned.

Hoole moved forward, uneasily. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘It sounds risky and I feel we oughtn’t to go
too
far, Offy. The whole thing’s too trivial. Fabricius could never make his accusations stick.’

‘Mud will
always
stick,’ Plummer growled. ‘Willie holds several of my directorships, and in politics that makes us the same person.’

Kitto had been standing by the door, his honest none-too-clever face calm and self-assured, his stance Napoleonic, waiting for Plummer’s approval.

Now he half-turned, eager to get on with the job. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll see this damn’ Yid off the premises for you.’

Plummer nodded. ‘Thanks, Kitto. I’ll see a word’s put in the right ear for you. You’ve been neglected too long.’

Kitto’s expression didn’t change. ‘I don’t need bribing,’ he said. ‘I’ll do the job properly without that.’

‘Perhaps a little chivvying now and again might even encourage them,’ Romanis suggested enthusiastically.

‘Don’t be so confounded bloodthirsty!’ Plummer snapped. ‘There’ll be no violence.’

‘Sammy Schuter’s not the sort to ask for kid-glove treatment,’ Winter pointed out. ‘He’d understand perfectly well what you meant if you rode his camp down in the darkness. He’s done it himself when he’s found people poaching on his hunting grounds.’

‘There’ll be
no violence,’
Plummer insisted. ‘Understand, Kitto?
No violence.
Just see he leaves, that’s all.’

‘If he’s only got a horse, I’ll run rings round him,’ Kitto said confidently. ‘I’ll go and organise it now.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Romanis said. ‘I’d like to be in on the fun.’

Plummer winced as the door slammed behind them, and Winter sighed.

‘I thought people like Kitto went out of date when the last Spartan fell dead at Thermopylae,’ he said.

Plummer looked weary, unmoved by humour. ‘He’s too damned honest,’ he said. ‘That’s the trouble with Kitto.’ He turned to the newspaperman. ‘That’ll be all, Hazell,’ he concluded flatly. ‘Thanks for your help.’

Hazell nodded, accepting his dismissal, and the door clashed behind him.

‘Better have Fabricius in now, Hoole,’ Plummer said, and Hoole stopped polishing his spectacles and went to the door. ‘And don’t go away. Stay with me. I’ll need you.’

Hoole nodded and as he disappeared, Plummer turned to Winter.

‘Frank,’ he said. ‘Go with Kitto.’

Winter sat up abruptly.
‘Go with him?’

‘Keep an eye on things for me.’

‘Offy, I’m no soldier!’

‘I can have you accepted as an accredited correspondent any time. Only requires a telephone call. Kitto’d be glad to have his name in the paper. Many a soldier’s reputation’s been made by having a newspaperman handy.’

Winter considered for a moment. ‘I thought my job was digging up other people’s dead dogs for you, Offy. Digging ‘em up and nailing ‘em to the wall where everybody could see ‘em. Or keeping your own well buried and stamped down.’

Plummer frowned. ‘Kitto’s hotheaded,’ he said. ‘I need someone with him to keep an eye on things. And Romanis is no damn’ good. I’ve never been lucky with my subordinates.’ He looked up, smiling faintly. ‘Still, neither was Rhodes. Look at the people who surrounded
him.’
He gazed at Winter appealingly. ‘There’s a lot at stake, Frank.’

Winter looked puzzled. ‘Surely Kitto can be relied on to do his job?’ he said. ‘You ought to know that. You were there in Dhanziland when he sat on that damned hill thirty years ago with ten mounted policemen, blowing bugles and waving and pretending to twelve thousand Dhanzis spread all over the plain in front that Makepeace’s column was just behind - not twenty miles away, as it was.
He
got you Dhanziland, Offy.’

Plummer nodded, his eyes distant at the memory. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘He got the bit between his teeth all right that day.’ He puffed at his cigar, a shadow of doubt on his face, then he smiled, reminiscing, warmed momentarily by the recollection of shared glory. ‘He stood out there in front of me - just a slip of a boy he was, in those days - holding his carbine, his sabre stuck in the ground in front of him in case they rushed him. It even got in the papers back home. He became a legend. All the same’ - he paused - ‘you heard him just now. He feels he owes no allegiance to me and I’d like someone around I could trust.’

Winter stared at his glass. ‘Seems to me it’d be less complicated if you brought Willie back,’ he pointed out. ‘And let him face the music’

‘I’d rather do it my way, Frank.’ Plummer seemed to be searching his soul, and he looked older suddenly.

Winter shrugged. ‘As you wish. But if this comes out, you’ll be hard put to keep your seat in the Cape Parliament. And then the financial wizards’ll be after you. They’ll drag
everything
up - even your lady friends.’

Plummer smiled faintly. ‘They’re after me
now,’
he said. ‘They’re after you from the day you make your first thousand.’

Winter opened his mouth to protest again, but the loose glassware in the door clashed as the marble handle moved.

Plummer turned. Hoole stood in the doorway ushering in another man - a tall man with a blond beard and a broad suspicious face.

Winter saw Plummer smother a sigh and advance towards him, his hand held out.

‘Dr Fabricius,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

Fabricius stood still, not attempting to shake hands, and Plummer’s arm dropped to his side. Winter saw the weariness in his face as he gathered his mental and spiritual resources, and he emptied his glass quickly and touched Plummer on the shoulder.

‘All right, Offy,’ he said.
‘Tot siens.
I’ll go. I’ll get a drink or two first. I’ll be thirsty work round Plummerton Sidings.’

A line of ragged trees marks the first sight of Plummerton Sidings as you approach it from Plummerton West. To this day, they stand out of a fold in the flat rocky surface of the veld, monumentally startling in the vast undulation of a plain markedly bare of vegetation.

Beyond, far beyond, wrapped in the pearly haze of distance, lies the stump of Sheba, sticking out like a stub of broken tooth against the sky. Originally, Sheba had been called Bokskop, after the little klipspringers which had once lived on its slope, but the idea that it had once been the city of the fabulous Queen of Sheba, a story put out by some wandering Englishman with an imagination and a carpet bag full of classics, and had been petrified into stone for all its wickedness, had appealed to the superstitious Dutch and the name had stuck.

The man on the little cart which was rolling with squeaking wheels towards the Sidings behind an old shaft-worn grey mare, stared across at its hazy shape as he reached the top of the rise, then his eyes fell into the shallow valley between and he leaned back on the seat and tautened his hand on the reins.

The little mare between the shafts shuffled to a halt, bored and dispirited, the chink of her harness loud in the stillness, and for a moment, the man sat staring at the line of trees before he was able to pick out the liquid shimmer among them that indicated the first sight of corrugated iron roofs.

It was only a small cart he drove. Its wooden body -- almost like a shallow coffin with hoops of iron for the canvas cover it sometimes wore - contained only a few odds and ends, a horse blanket, an old rust-scarred rifle and a rope; a sack of provisions and a trunk tied with stout string, which belonged to the woman who half-dozed beside him on the seat, her head on his shoulder nodding to every jolt of the cart.

For a long time he sat motionless, almost as though he were part of the cart, chewing a piece of grass, his restless gaze quartering the distance. His Semitic long-nosed face was thin and smooth, and his eyes under the battered felt hat he wore were so pale they seemed like spots of white in the shadow. His skin was dark, touched with the suggestion of a beard, and his forelock fell over his eyes like the broken wing of a raven.

In front of him a group of eucalyptus trees gave a scrap of sparse speckled shade to the crown of the ridge, white and bleached-looking against the sharp metallic blue of the sky like some pagan monument, and he sat staring beyond them, his washed blue eyes distant as though they were looking over the curve of the next slope. His rumpled trousers were coated with the reddish dust of the road and he wore an old salt-and-pepper jacket that looked like someone else’s cast-off. His face was young and largely unlined, the face of a boy who had grown into a man too soon, but there was something in the unquiet blue eyes that was very adult and experienced.